If you live there — near Galena High School or where the Mount Rose Highway goes below Interstate 580 — you likely haven’t felt much, if anything. But earthquake-detecting instruments in the area have picked up almost 250 small temblors since late Jan. 11.

The largest in the swarm so far, which hit Tuesday afternoon, measured a 2.7 on the Richter scale, a magnitude that University of Nevada, Reno seismologist Ken Smith described as pretty small.

"You'd have to be right above it to really feel anything," he said, noting they've gotten a few dozen reports from people who have felt the jolts.

The magnitude would have to increase to a 4.0 or more for many people to feel it indoors, kind of like a truck striking a building, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Nearly everybody feels a magnitude 5.0 quake, 10 times stronger than a magnitude 4.0.

While earthquakes in Northern Nevada are commonplace — the Silver State is the third-most seismically active state in the nation — Smith said he and his colleagues at the university’s Nevada Seismological Laboratory pay special attention to earthquake swarms.

“In a way, it’s kind of a heads up.”

Ken Smith, University of Nevada, Reno

Swarms of small earthquakes can sometimes act as warning systems for larger events to come.

Scientists can't tell if this swarm will die off or yield something larger, Smith said.

“But if they do, we want to be on top of it,” he said. “In a way it’s kind of a heads up.”

Hundreds of small earthquakes preceded two of Reno’s more recent seismic events, a 2013 magnitude 4.4 temblor in Spanish Springs, about 10 miles northeast of Reno, and the 2008 magnitude 4.7 in the Mogul-Somersett area about 6 miles west of Reno.

This swarm is tightly clustered underneath I-580 and Old U.S. 395, about a mile and a half from Galena High School.

Social media commenters, reacting to stories initially reporting the swarm last week, pointed out that the swarm is located in the same area as the Ormat Steamboat Geothermal Power Plant.

It’s unclear which fault system is producing this swarm, but Smith said the Reno's southern suburbs — especially near the mountain ranges — frequently get a little shaky.

Faults in the area produced sizable quakes as recently as 2015. That seismic event, known as the Thomas Creek Sequence, produced a series of magnitude 3.0 tremors that culminated with a magnitude 4.0 earthquake.

People living in Northern Nevada need to be prepared for the smaller, more commonplace earthquakes just as much as they would be prepared for the “big one,” Smith said.

“Everyone is worried about the big one, but it doesn’t take the big one to knock over your water heater and empty out your shelves,” he said. Strapping down your water heater and securing bookcases to walls are simple things to do to prepare.

Though the largest temblor hit Tuesday afternoon, it appears the swarm is slowing down.